Photo: Fish City

The Count

Today (Wed, May 13) — the Voyager came back from a 1.5-day with 35 bonito alongside 14 bluefin and 6 yellowfin. The New Seaforth tagged 2 more on a half-day AM.

Everyone watching the bluefin counts missed this. Bonito ran 53 → 46 → 82 → 178 → 215 over the past five weeks — a 4.7× jump off the April floor with no fluke trip carrying it. New Seaforth, Tribute, Legend, Voyager, and El Gato Dos have all touched them on different days. That's broad fleet participation, not one captain getting lucky.

The story the chart tells: two parallel bonito routes are open right now. The half-day route (New Seaforth at Seaforth Sportfishing — 63 bonito last week, hitting them every week since mid-April) and the overnight route (the Tribute and the Legend pairing bonito with bluefin on 1.5- and 2-day trips). The Legend returned May 10 with 60 bonito and 31 bluefin to 140 lb for 26 anglers — that's the version where the bonito are the dessert course on a tuna trip.

Conditions When the Bite Was Hot

Water temp is the headline condition: 66–66.2°F at the offshore buoys, which is squarely in bonito's preferred 64–70°F range and about 3°F warmer than the same week in May 2025 (when 46086 averaged 62°F and 46232 averaged 63°F across the same calendar week). Swell is moderate at 3–4 feet on an 11–12 second period — comfortable for the half-day boats running the kelp edge and the overnight boats heading to the 9-Mile Bank and beyond. Wind has been a manageable NW at 8 knots.

The moon is the other tailwind. New moon hits May 17. Bonito are visual predators that key on bait silhouettes, and dark nights through the back half of next week mean the bait pushes shallow and the bonito follow. The new-moon advantage is more often discussed for offshore bluefin — but it works the same way for any pelagic working a kelp edge after dark.

7-Day Forecast

Friday and Saturday are the picks. Water warming through the period, wind staying under 10 knots, and the moon backing all the way off into a New Moon on Sunday — that's a stack of factors that points at the kind of dark-water surface bite bonito (and bluefin) feed in.

The wildcard is Sunday. South wind forecast at 10–15 mph builds afternoon chop and stacks a short-period south swell on top of the existing west swell. Half-day boats off the kelp will still fish through it, but if you're running an overnight from Saturday into Sunday, plan to ride home in some weather. The 1.5-day trips departing Saturday afternoon are the smart pick — you get the prime weekend bite window and the boat is back at the dock before the breeze peaks Sunday afternoon.

Every condition is either matching the past week's bite or moving in a favorable direction. Water is warming a degree or two through the forecast period, swell is easing, and the moon trajectory toward New Moon Sunday is the kind of dark-water timing offshore captains plan trips around. The only flag is Sunday's wind — not a deal-breaker, just a "depart Saturday, return Saturday or Sunday morning" planning note.

What Anglers Are Saying

The Voyager and Legend reports are the tell. The bonito is no longer a "the bluefin shut off so we grabbed some bonito on the way home" story — it's a planned part of the trip. Captains are telling crews to be ready for both bites because both bites are happening on the same body of water on the same day.

For the half-day audience, the New Seaforth's pattern matters: 63 bonito over the past 7 days across 1/2 Day AM and PM trips, mixed in with calicos and rockfish on the kelp edge from Imperial Beach to Point Loma. That's a $60–$90 trip with action, not a $500+ overnight to chase tuna — and the bonito are still showing.

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